Ambient devices are becoming more common in people's lives, such as hands-free devices on cars, smart headphones, digital assistants without displays, Bluetooth headsets, etc. As a result, speech-based interfaces are becoming more common. Verbal interactions are easy for asking simple questions (e.g., what time is it, what's the temperature, who wrote Don Juan, remind me at to turn on the oven) but difficult two absorb long messages, such as emails.
There are many situations where users do not have easy access to an electronic device with a display and the user wants to check the status of communications, e.g., new emails, new text messages, new social network posts, etc. Often, communications include a textual component, and is very easy to consume this type of communications when a display is available, but much more difficult to access this content via audio communications. It is much harder to process messages “read” to someone than simply reading the messages, because it takes the brain much more focus to listen to messages than to read them.
For example, if a user is jogging, it is not easy to read a display, however, the user is able to listen for messages. Unfortunately, some messages (e.g., email messages) may be long and simply having an electronic device read these long messages may take a long time and a large amount of concentration. Further, trying to read a display while jogging may have disastrous consequences, such as having an accident or dropping and damaging the phone.